


The Soul Emperor

by ggggnashville



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pining Sherlock, mind palace mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 03:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2907122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ggggnashville/pseuds/ggggnashville
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has tried countless times in his head to compose a way to say everything to John.  Everything.  Not just “I love you” or even “I am in love with you.”  Both of these are completely insufficient and partially why he cannot seem to let the confession slide out of his mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soul Emperor

Sherlock has tried countless times in his head to compose a way to say everything to John. Everything. Not just “I love you” or even “I am in love with you.” Both of these are completely insufficient and partially why he cannot seem to let the confession slide out of his mouth. 

When he has said the words out loud, alone in Baker Street, his mouth has felt overly wet, too full, and his teeth have felt too big for his lips to cover. He has let his mouth hang open for ages after he’s said the words. They are not enough. 

Sherlock has imagined a few ways in which a confession would be sufficient, but they would take so much explaining. 

 

The easiest perhaps would be to confess to John that his entire mind palace has been rebuilt upon a foundation of him, and top to bottom is filled with different subtleties about John.   
The very beginning of the palace, the first cement bricks laid, are John’s hands. They hold Sherlock’s mind in a gentle caress, carrying all it has to offer. Sherlock knows how fragile this has made him, to place his brain in someone else’s hands has been damaging at times, but John’s hands have seemed the safest place for it. His hands are sturdy, and steady when in danger, warm, and secure. Sherlock’s mind will never be dropped, or held too hard to the point of being crushed. Sherlock doesn’t even mind the irresponsibility of this decision. In fact, he revels in the thrill of it. _Maybe John Watson will crush my entire being._ What a fantastic way to go.

The next part comes the ground floor. The ground floor is based off the way John takes tea. He drinks his English Breakfast with just a dash of milk, and one spoonful of sugar. John always lets the kettle go for eleven minutes and fourteen seconds, and he lets the tea steep for three.   
There are eleven rooms on the ground floor, three of which can only be opened with a key.   
The color John’s tea turns when it is completely steeped and ready for consumption is the exact color of Victor Trevor’s eyes. A warm brown, his skin being just a bit lighter. Sherlock would kiss this boy and his elegantly long Indian nose during his University days in his dorm room on the third floor. This dorm room (the first room) is where Sherlock goes when he wants to remember that once, someone liked him. Like John does. (But also not like John does). 

The second floor has 217 rooms. This is the amount of eyelashes John has on the upper lid of his right eye. Redbeard is on this floor, and so is Moriarty. He has to keep them somewhere, after all. This floor often floods, and after it is cleaned out smells like John’s shampoo. 

The third floor is just John. This room, Sherlock does not enter often (because it hurts to). He does have to sometimes though. When he needs to be calmed, he goes there. Mary blocked it off once, but just the once.   
Whenever he opens the door to this room, John will turn and look over his shoulder, mouth neutral, but with his right eyebrow cocked, as if he doesn’t know who is entering. His hands are always clasped behind his back. Then, he turns the whole way around and sees Sherlock, and smiles gently, no teeth, just a thin line. The room is white, and bright, and completely cleansed of anything but John. This room is perfect. Sometimes (being a total of three times (twice while he was away destroying Moriarty’s network, the third the night of John’s marriage), when Sherlock is alone and feeling particularly horrible because of it, he will arrange the night sky above them, and they will lay underneath it. Nothing else has ever entered this room. John is always wearing his maroon cardigan with the plaid underneath (he looks most handsome in this). 

 

This, the re-creation of his mind palace, is one way in which Sherlock could explain to John how he cares for him. This might be enough to make him start to understand.

 

The next might be the list of ways Sherlock hopes to die, and often fantasizes about these scenarios. In every single one, John is there. Sometimes, John kills him.

 

There are a total of seventeen scenarios, but Sherlock has three favorites.

The first is during the day. Sherlock is shot on a case and bleeds out all over John as he is held in John’s trembling fingers. This is cliché and pathetic, but Sherlock does not care. It would be beautiful, to smear his own blood across John’s cheek as he reaches out to him one last time. Sherlock knows this is fucking disgusting, and doesn’t give a damn. 

The second is to die at the exact same second as John, so that he will not ever have to live in a world in which John Watson is not alive. He’d prefer they died younger than sixty, but he’d be willing for older if that’s what John wants. They drown together, and though Sherlock cannot breathe he has John’s lips on his so he suffocates beautifully to the press of John’s mouth on his. 

The third (and horrifyingly his ultimate favorite, he will admit to himself sometimes) is that John will strangle him to death against a wall in 221B Baker Street. The intimacy of the idea of this act leaves Sherlock dizzy. When Sherlock came back from the dead and John pinned him to the ground and wrapped his hands around his neck, Sherlock thought, for the briefest of moments that all of his most secret desires were about to come true. Sadly they did not, but Sherlock has filed away the feeling of John’s beautiful fingers against his throat, in hopes, with patience. 

 

Better still might be that Sherlock has completely memorized every moment he has spent with John, and every word he has said to or thought about John, even when John wasn’t there. In his darkest moments, Sherlock has replayed all of these moments, starting from their meeting at Bart’s to the present. He likes to rewind and replay the look on John’s face when he found that he didn’t need his cane, or his voice when he says “You, flirted, with Sherlock Holmes” to Irene Adler. John sounded jealous, in Sherlock’s fantasies, had been jealous. 

There are many things John does not know or fully comprehend, like the fact that Sherlock threw away his career and reputation (happily) to save John’s life. He does not know that Sherlock once stabbed a man for mentioning John’s name (his time abroad in Russia), and he does not know that while Sherlock planned John’s wedding, he was not panicked, but rather in a terrified calm. The eye of the storm. John has no idea that Sherlock has never wanted anything more than to kiss him until he ran out of breath entirely and collapsed onto the floor. Sherlock very much wants John to suck the life out of him. 

Sherlock would like to turn John into an element on the periodic table. He knows John would be an Alkaline Earth Metal, but he can’t decide between Beryllium or Calcium. If John were an element, he’d know what to do with him, at least. 

 

Perhaps, if Sherlock told John that he dreams of keeping John in his bedroom and never letting him leave, keeping him hostage there, he could begin to understand. In this dream, John only does as Sherlock says. He eats only when he is told, sleeps only when he is told, speaks only when spoken to, and bathes in the makeshift bathtub in Sherlock’s bedroom, between the bed and the dresser, washing each limb as Sherlock instructs, eyes never leaving, endlessly wandering. They are alone and together forever. 

To counteract this fantasy is also the one in which Sherlock and John have exchanged roles, but John is vicious. Sherlock has to be told to breathe every morning or he won’t. He’ll turn blue before he lets that happen. In this fantasy Sherlock happily strips down for John and lets John have his way with him. It is always delightfully painful, and his eyes water when John pulls his hair or chokes him with his cock shoved down his throat. He has no qualms with any of this. 

 

Sherlock would like to know what John sounds like when he screams so loud and long that he cannot speak afterwards. 

Sherlock’s want is the purest softest pink, like an afterglow. 

So, this is why Sherlock does not say “I love you” on the tarmac, because it would be a lie. It is so much more than that. It sounds too simple and the amount will not be conveyed by any words. How does one describe the feeling of being scrubbed raw until you feel like a bloody stump that has been half chewed apart, then left out in snow, staining and tainting the pure white that surrounds you with your blood?

“I love you” is for fuck all. “I love you” is meaningless in comparison to this ache.

**Author's Note:**

> the title "The Soul Emperor" is a reference to James Baldwin's book Just Above My Head.


End file.
